Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) via Frank Thorp V:

COTTON on #DCStatehood: "Yes, Wyoming is smaller than Washington by population, but it has three times as many workers in mining, logging and construction, and ten times as many workers in manufacturing. In other words, Wyoming is a well-rounded working-class state."

— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) June 25, 2020

We’d need more states because of all these big cities? This is known as ignoring relevant facts, in this case the fact that residents of Washington, DC, have no federal representation (“No Taxation Without Representation” not important any longer, eh, Cotton?), unlike Los Angeles, New York City, and, oh, all the rest of them.

It’s even better than trying to be on the side of all those working-class people by dividing them from the equally hard working people of Washington, DC. A classic attempt to divide the people from each other by Cotton, whose reelection efforts already reek of dubious ethics.

Another group of polls concerning Senate races have been released by The New York Times:

Senator Martha McSally of Arizona, a Republican, trails her Democratic opponent, Mark Kelly, by nine percentage points …

But Other is 16%, an important factor.

… Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina is behind his Democratic rival, Cal Cunningham, by three.

Other is 19%.

In Michigan, which Senate Republicans viewed as one of their few opportunities to go on the offensive this year, Senator Gary Peters, a first-term Democrat, is up by 10 percentage points over John James, who is one of the G.O.P.’s most prized recruits.

But Other is 29%, which is somewhat astonishing.

In summary, no candidate is over 50%, so no race can be considered safe; these results are merely encouraging for Democrats. I would consider Cunningham the most vulnerable leader, but the fact that he’s ahead at all is surprising.

But the entire trend speaks to the political depravity displayed by the Republicans since the election of President Trump. The electorate, in the 2018 midterms, demonstrated a growing awareness of the Republicans’ fallen state, as it were, and the ongoing mendacity and mismanagement associated with the coronavirus appears to be enhancing that repugnance. While the Republican leaders continue to express public optimism about the November elections, I don’t think it matters how many members of the Republican base refuse to talk to pollsters, a claim that some GOP state leaders use as justification for their belief in another November surprise; without an amazing turnaround in the practices and numbers of the Republicans that strike independents as responsible and positive, this could be a very bleak November for the far right fringe.

This is what comes from living in the epistemic bubble. The definitions of norms for the bubble occupants slowly drifts from the overall societal norms, until the bubble occupants express amazement at the general norms, beliefs, and expectations of their fellow citizens at those rare moments when they encounter them. The epistemic bubble has been recognized since roughly 2000, if not before, and we’re seeing the results of living in isolation from the mainstream now. Chuck in this little gem if you’re not so sure:

White House spokesman Judd Deere brushed aside concerns that dismantling Obamacare could worsen the pandemic crisis, saying in a statement to The Post, “A global pandemic does not change what Americans know: Obamacare has been an unlawful failure and further illustrates the need to focus on patient care.” [WaPo]

Source: Gallup

“… what Americans know: …” may not be a brazen lie. Deere may actually believe what he’s saying, despite the fact that the ACA (“ObamaCare”) consistently gains the approval of a small majority of Americans.

I worry that social media tends to amplify the tendency to not stray beyond one’s comfort zone. Back when we didn’t have innumerable news sources tailored to to sooth our delicate senses, newspapers and TV stations, few as they were in any given market, necessarily served up news that might grate on us, but also cross-pollinated and gave us a basis for understanding one another. Their loss is our loss, in a way: we drown in a glut of news that makes us happy, rather than being updated on the state of the world, as uneven as that often proved to be.

The future depends on people being willing to stray out of their bubbles.

Immunity to rational thought, at least. That’s right, the old emailbag has popped open again and eructated another mischief missive whose purpose is to keep those damn conservatives strictly in line. I’ll reproduce this one in pieces with observations as necessary.

Subject: Sixty years ago people said it will NEVER happen. It all comming [sic!] true

WE ARE ON THE WAY

Sixty years ago people said it will NEVER happen

Khrushchev’s Message 61 years ago

Khrushchev also said “We [Communism} will bury you!” A quick read but a lasting thought. Pretty scary now.

Khrushchev’s Message 61 years ago:

THIS WAS HIS ENTIRE QUOTE: A sobering reminder. Almost exactly sixty years ago since Russia’s Khrushchev delivered his Do you remember September 29, 1959? THIS WAS HIS ENTIRE QUOTE:

“Your children’s children will live under communism, You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept communism outright; but we will keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you will finally wake up and find you already have Communism. We will not have to fight you; we will so weaken your economy, until you will fall like overripe fruit into our hands.” “The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”

Ah, a leading statement, as it were: this is where the author would like his audience to end up – quivering in terror at the thought of living in a Soviet-style state, a situation most everyone, including myself, would prefer to avoid. But I, ever the goat, had the temerity to ask Why the hell do I care about Kruschchev? I shall now call him ‘K’, and ask those who shudder in terror if K also foresaw that his own empire would fragment under its own corrupt, inefficient weight, and is now an oligopolic free market led by a former KGB agent? Did he? Of course not.

So why give this dude any sort of credit for prescience? And then, doing my due diligence, I asked when K made this awful prediction and discovered that the celebrated Snopes rates a whole raft of claims like this one as Unproven.

Well. He’s a terrible clairvoyant and he may not have said the above. But wait, there’s more!

Do you remember what Russia’s Khrushchev said in 1959?

Remember, socialism leads to Communism. So, how do you create a Socialistic State?

There are 8 levels of control; read the following recipe:

1) Healthcare – Control healthcare and you control the people.

2) Poverty – Increase the poverty level as high as possible, poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if you are providing everything for them.

3) Debt – Increase the debt to an unsustainable level. That way you are able to increase taxes and this will produce more poverty.

4) Gun Control – Remove the ability to defend themselves from the Government That way you are able to create a police state.

5) Welfare – Take control of every aspect (food, housing, income) of their lives because that will make them fully dependent on the government.

6) Education – Take control of what people read and listen to and take control of what children learn in school.

7) Religion – Remove the belief in God from the Government and schools because the people need to believe in ONLY the government knowing what is best for the people.

8) Class Warfare – Divide the people into the wealthy and the poor.  Eliminate the middle class this will cause more discontent and it will be easier to tax the wealthy with the support of the poor

Once again, due diligence, but this time I’m shocked to find the quotes are attributed not to the big K … but to some dude named Saul Alinsky! Yes, it’s Snopes again, and this time K is not even mentioned, only Alinsky, and then Snopes points out …

But this list is not something taken from the actual writings of Saul Alinsky, nor does it even sound like something he would have written (e.g., the line about “controlling health care” is anachronistic for his era, and the idea of “increasing the poverty level as high as possible” is the very antithesis of what Alinsky worked to achieve). This list is simply a modern variant of the decades-old, apocryphal Communist Rules for Revolution piece that was originally passed along without attribution until Alinsky’s name became attached to it (presumably because someone out there thought it sounded like something Alinsky might have written).

Yes, this appears to be someone’s fever dream, inspired by the fraudulent Nostradamus, by someone desperate to shore up conservatives who may be showing signs of thinking for themselves. The words communism and socialism are standard trigger words for conservatives, as well as gun control, thus setting up the fight or flight mechanism, which tends to exclude thinking.

And I’m glad I did this due diligence, because, for the careful reader, that list of eight points is positively fertile ground for turning the message back in the face of the author. For example, #3 is the fault of the Republicans, as any self-respecting pundit will admit. No, no, no more. It’s like those fishies in barrels.

And then I’d be going to bed way too late tonight. But, since, as we’ve seen, this entire message is nothing more than someone’s attempt to herd the conservatives along, with no anchor in facts, reality, or truth, I don’t have to.

Here, I just ask the conservative reader to have a bit of self-respect.

Our first batch of coleus died on us, perhaps burned by a cold snap in the spring. We went out and bought three more last weekend, and they’re quite dramatic.

This is rather like putting your fingers in your ears because you can’t stand the truth, isn’t it?

[Representative] Louie Gohmert [(R-TX)] bangs his desk during the opening statement of former deputy attorney general Donald Ayer at a hearing into the politicisation of the Department of Justice under current attorney general, William Barr. Gohmert was threatened with removal after he complained Ayer exceeded his allotted time [The Guardian]

Donald Ayer’s a prominent Democrat, though, so that would justify everything, right? Ooops, he was appointed by Reagan to be a US Attorney, and Bush I as deputy AG. Maybe he’s, like, one of those competent people who are simply horrified by the Trump Administration? That might be a trifle closer to the truth.

There’s a video of the kid at work in the above link. He’s quite the immature legislator.

With a TrumpScore of 85%, Gohmert’s a middlin’ Trumpie. I suspect that Gohmert is appalled at the thought that the ideology he shares with Trump might burn right to the ground as more and more of the truth is disclosed – and cost him a job, even though he wins overwhelming victories in TX-1. So he’ll stick his finger in the dike and hope he can hold back what is beginning to appear to be the entire North Sea.

I’m actually looking forward to hearing the results of his reelection run. With a 46 point win in 2018, he has 23 points to free fall, but if his old buddy Trump continues to mismanage everything he touches, Gohmert might find the floor coming up mighty fast.

Jed Stiglitz on Dorf On Law suggests the imbecilic behavior of Trump and his nominees, when it comes to judicial matters such as the recent DACA brouhaha, may be a symptom of a deeper plot:

Let me float another explanation that is outside of normal politics and fits with a broader pattern in this administration. Suppose you were trying to degrade the judiciary. To undermine values core to the institution, that is, and moreover to publicly demonstrate that the judiciary is spent and subordinate. What might you do?

One strategy might be to advance poor cases. In fact, the poorer the better. If you convince the judiciary to go along with a strong case, that helps you little. But if you can convince the judiciary to submit to a weak case, that is very helpful. Submission to a weak case is helpful in the first instance because it directly undermines the integrity of the institution’s internal logic. The institution must contort itself to accommodate the weak case and find ways to ignore its own history. It is helpful in the second instance because the weaker the case, the more of a public statement the judiciary’s submission is. Submission to absurdity shows all that the administration is dominant and without judicial constraint.

Here, the fact that Nielsen very easily could have fixed the explanation is part of the point. She would not take the smallest steps to accommodate the court or its internal logic. It was helpful, moreover, that the case confronted the adequacy of reason-giving, a value core to the judiciary (and in ordinary times, the administrative state). Submission to these facts would be very useful to breaking the judiciary. This theory also explains the rush to the Supreme Court, where the administration thought it might receive a more readily submissive audience than in the relevant Circuits. The Supreme Court, of course, is also more high profile, all the better for public display. Further, the theory more closely explains the vote by the Supreme Court. It was the institutionalist, Roberts, who voted against the administration despite his conservative ideology. The other four conservative justices were willing to go along with the administration.

A chilling thought, although it does leave the liberal wing of SCOTUS looking good, along with the older judges in the system, such as Judge Emmet Sullivan. In fact, Trump-nominated Judge Rao’s suggestion that Sullivan’s case regarding Michael Flynn is “not the unusual case” is, as I said yesterday, astounding – or absurd.

Site proprietor Michael Dorf writes in the comments:

Thanks to Jed for this terrific analysis, which echoes Hannah Arendt’s account of the role that absurd lies play in totalitarian regimes. Arendt wrote that “totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that . . . one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”

I have not read Arendt, but I presume that the “people” have too much pride to admit they’ve been corralled by miscreants and ill-doers, and thus the autocrats just have to play on that pride to continue in their positions. The constant appeals to victimhood, the cultivation of xenophobia, and several other tactics are really just the dogs the shepherd uses to keep the herd together and under control.

This is why I’ve never been a joiner. Group dynamics are pernicious when viewed from the outside.

Sonja Eliason and Bridget Alex investigate the characteristics of plague from an archaeological viewpoint, comparing how societies differed before and during the the granddaddy of them all, the Justinianic Plague, on The Conversation, and come to an unsurprising conclusion:

While encouraging economic and technological gains, urban development and trade created ideal conditions for an epidemic in Constantinople. Vulnerability to plague was an unintended consequence of this society’s lifestyle.

Meanwhile, it seems earlier cultures [that didn’t experience “over-congestion] unwittingly shielded themselves from the same threat.

The harsh reality is that it’s exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to control a pathogen, its possible mutations or its next outbreak. But understanding how human behaviors affect the spread and virulence of a disease can inform preparations for the future.

As a society, we can take organized measures to reduce the spread of infection, whether by limiting over-congestion, controlling food waste, or restricting access to contaminated areas. Human behaviors are just as critical to our disease susceptibility as are the characteristics of the pathogen itself.

Keep in mind that congestion will be a relative term, dependent on the characteristics of the pathogen under examination; the more infectious the pathogen, the lesser the necessary population density to qualify as congested.

We make unconscious tradeoffs when we centralize in cities: commerce of many kinds becomes much more efficient, but at the cost of disease and death for those who stumbled into the wrong situation, whether it be the cough of those already infected or the contaminated shared water source. Medicine has acted as the neutralizing agent since it came under modern scientific management, but rarely can medical researchers react quickly to a new pathogen; it’s only by luck that a medicine already through safety trials (or, worse, grand-daddied out of those trials!) can be successfully applied to a new pathogen.

And, of course, medicine is impotent when public health is not prioritized by those in power, as we’re beginning to vividly realize. In a way, the current … I cannot call it debate … dispute over whether the economy should be reopening even as multiple American states are experiencing novel coronavirus infection surges (click here to see the overall American contretemps) writes large the tradeoffs those people of so long ago experienced.

An occasional pet peeve of mine is the subject of expectations. Let me give a quick concrete example: When the Metro Light Rail went in here in the Twin Cities and initially opened up, the local media was all agog as they announced that more than twice the expected number of people had ridden the light rail in the first X months.

We’re all supposed to get excited with them, right?

But, to me, being slightly cynical, I had to ask, first, On what are these expectations built? and then, even worse, Is this even the right metric?

The first question is a technical question about how a metric is estimated, and this takes place without discussion of what they’re trying to measure. Think about it: the number of people riding the light rail relates to what how?

The unvoiced, and either assumed or, insert dark music, unexplored causal chain here is how that estimated number captures the percentage of goal achieved. Removing some of the abstractions here, we don’t choose to install a light rail system, or widen the interstate, or for that matter polish the Capitol building, because we have an excess of money flowing out of our wallets. We do it because there’s some a problem to solve, a problem of such magnitude and impact on society that it seems worthwhile to spend many millions of dollars to solve it.

So, as an engineer, it seems far more logical to me to quantify the problem, estimate the impact that this solution, which may be a partial solution (and that’s fine), will have on the problem, and then measure the actual impact. That, not so incidentally, is how we’ve gradually realized that widening the interstates as a solution to commuter gridlock is not the solution we’d like to think it should be. How do we know? Because we did it, we’ve widened interstates, and gridlock simply continues. Remember Build it and they will come? Yep, that’s what happened.

All of this came to mind when a reader sent me a pair of links concerning police body cameras. Here’s the first, from Governing:

Police Body Cameras Aren’t Having the Effects Many Expected

For years, many people hailed body-worn cameras as a potential key to improving police transparency and strengthening often-fractured relationships with the communities they serve. But so far, academic research suggests the technology largely hasn’t lived up to those expectations.

That’s the conclusion of a new report from the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy at George Mason University.

Researchers reviewed 70 empirical studies on body cameras’ effects, ranging from officer and citizen behavior to influences on law enforcement agencies as a whole. While much of the research remains mixed, it counters some promised benefits of body cameras at a time when departments are increasingly adopting the technology.

And then this one from NPR:

Body Cam Study Shows No Effect On Police Use Of Force Or Citizen Complaints

Having police officers wear little cameras seems to have no discernible impact on citizen complaints or officers’ use of force, at least in the nation’s capital.

That’s the conclusion of a study performed as Washington, D.C., rolled out its huge camera program. The city has one of the largest forces in the country, with some 2,600 officers now wearing cameras on their collars or shirts.

“We found essentially that we could not detect any statistically significant effect of the body-worn cameras,” says Anita Ravishankar, a researcher with the Metropolitan Police Department and a group in the city government called the Lab @ DC.

“I think we’re surprised by the result. I think a lot of people were suggesting that the body-worn cameras would change behavior,” says Chief of Police Peter Newsham. “There was no indication that the cameras changed behavior at all.”

Perhaps, he says, that is because his officers “were doing the right thing in the first place.

But was it realistic to expect behavioral changes by the police because they wear body cams?

Look: body cams have been in the process of adoption because of dissatisfaction with certain outcomes involving police and the public. As a proud member of the Instant Gratification Generation, I can understand why everyone wanted to believe that having a body cam would cause the police to … improve.  That’s what I hoped for when I heard about body cams. Having fewer poor outcomes might be the metric we desired.

But I think what we need to realize is that body cams are a documentary tool, not a corrective tool. They are not analogous to a cattle prod, zapping an officer who’s not performing properly right when they commit an impropriety; in order for body cams to function as a corrective tool, the officers would have to be thinking about how they’re reacting now and how it’s going to look on the body cam, all while reacting to a situation which may be life and death right now.

That’s too much to expect.

But I have to take issue with Michael White, cited in the NPR report, on this statement:

The big question about cameras now is, White says: “Is it worth the cost?” Besides buying the actual cameras, cash-strapped police departments have to pay to store and manage many thousands of hours of video footage. “I think a big part of the answer to that question is going to come from what the police department and the community want to accomplish with the rollout of body-worn cameras.”

Even as I agree with him that the footage from body cams will generally have little long term value, I have to say I think that as a documentary tool, they may prove to be initially highly valuable. Not as a tool for evaluating if this or that police officer is performing well or poorly, but as a general documentary tool for evaluating whether police are the proper response to categories of situation. I and readers have touched on this subject before with regards to the Eugene, OR long term experiment with CAHOOTS, a agency trained to respond to situations for which police often prove ill-suited, such as the mentally ill. They are not armed, but they are equipped for their specific emergency situations.

This body cam footage may turn out to be invaluable for deciding which categories of incidents warrant police response, and which categories call for response by groups other than police, such as mental health professionals. Ideally, those categories in which the police simply do not perform well could be reassigned to non-police forces specialized for those situations, much like the CAHOOTS force, above, leaving others for police to work on. As most police forces complain about their burden these days, they should welcome this approach to police reorganization.

The metric changes from quantification to classification.

That said, it remains true that police are one of the vectors for system racism. I think body cams are turning out to be an inefficient tool for documenting and evaluating officer behavior when it comes to undesired incident outcomes. Along with the difficulty in understanding just what is happening, especially during an altercation, my main objection is that the body cams are under the control of the subjects under study – the police. No competent scientist would permit this if at all possible. All it takes is for a body cam to mysteriously not work for a moment or two in order to lose key data.

If we really want to pursue direct observation of officers’ performance, ideally we’d like to have God observing each incident and sending us a written summary. Lacking that, how close can we get?

Without much idea of how expensive and difficult this would be to implement, I’d recommend an independent agency of drones and drone monitor operators. They would not be members of the police, and the drones would not be weapons platforms. They’d only carry cameras, and they’d launch whenever the police responded to an incident. Perhaps based on the roof of the police cars, the drone, controlled by its operator, would be responsible for filming the incident from advantageous angles in order to evaluate performance and, in tragic cases, convey the recordings of the incident to the District Attorney for follow up and prosecution. The drone operator would not be at the scene of the action, but remote, instead.

Is this perfect? Of course not. Police could “accidentally” shoot the drone down and then shoot their suspect down in cold blood. Their are other ways to defeat the drone, which I shan’t bother to enumerate, which would be more subtle. But this should improve the situation at least somewhat.

A lovely, if incomplete, chart, from WaPo:

What’s missing? A scaling factor. Here’s what you need to know – the United States has a population of roughly 330 million, he European Union of 444 million. If that graph was scaled to take into account population differences, the US would look even worse.

Same source:

“There is no second wave coming,” White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow announced Monday, almost exactly four months and 118,000 deaths after he infamously declared the virus “contained” and “pretty close to airtight.” Vice President Pence made a similar declaration in a self-back-patting op-ed last week: “Whatever the media says, our whole-of-America approach has been a success.”

That’s all. Our leadership wants us to believe in something other than reality. Do so at your own risk.

Last time I looked in on the Montana Senate race back in March, it was basically deadlocked. Now? Hard to say, with no polls in June, at least so far. But back in early May, maybe six weeks ago, Governor Bullock (D-MT) was showing some heavy hitting capability, putting the incumbent, Senator Daines (R-MT), under pressure:

A new poll from Montana State University shows Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock leading Republican Sen. Steve Daines by seven percentage points in Montana’s high-profile 2020 U.S. Senate contest.

The online poll, which surveyed 738 Montanans in mid-to-late April, asked registered, likely voters who they would support, if the election for Senate were held now. Just over 46 percent said they’d choose Bullock and 39 percent supported Daines.

Seven percent said they were undecided, while another 6 percent said they would vote for someone else. A Libertarian and Green Party candidate also are on the ballot.

David Parker, the chair of the political science department at MSU-Bozeman, said the poll confirms that the Bullock-Daines contest will be a close, hard-fought race – one of the most-watched Senate matchups in the nation.

“I think it’s certainly reasonable to assume that the race is probably within the margin of error and too close to call,” he told MTN News. “So, while we show a lead (for Bullock), it’s within the margin of error, so I would say, yeah, this is a competitive Senate race.”

The poll’s margin of error is plus-or-minus 4.6 percentage points. [KTVH]

I’m not sure how a plus/minus of 4.6 makes a 7 point lead within the margin of error, but there you go. It’s still a long ways to election day, but Bullock has the numbers running in his direction at the moment. In fact, a little digging turned up this:

So Bullock has progressed from down 9 points to up 7 points. If he can push this into double digits, it may be safe to assume he’ll become a US Senator come next January. Daines, meanwhile, must carry the burden of being of the Party of Trump, and while a TrumpScore of 85% shows some independence from the President, the Party of Trump does love its slavish adherence to the President – while Montanans greatly value independence. This will be a tricky cliff for Daines to negotiate.

PS: And finally, Governor Bullock has been endorsed by The Lincoln Project, a group of Republicans dedicated to be rid of Trump.

In the case of General Michael Flynn, who plead guilty, twice, to lying to FBI agents before changing attorneys and then changing his plea, which [breath] was followed by Attorney General Barr deciding to withdraw the entire prosecution, precipitating Judge Emmet Sullivan into putting that matter on hold in order to collect opinions and hold a hearing on whether to accept that move, [breath again] resulting in Flynn and the DoJ appealing to the next level up in the federal judiciary, it turns out a panel of the DC Court of Appeals doesn’t think that’s important, uh, “that” being the lying:

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan cannot scrutinize the Justice Department’s decision to drop its long-running prosecution of President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn and must dismiss the case, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

In a 2-1 decision, the court said it is not within the judge’s power to prolong the prosecution or examine the government’s motives for its reversal in the politically charged case. Flynn twice pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents about his pre-inauguration contacts with Russia’s ambassador before the Justice Department moved in May to dismiss the charges.

When your family goes to court to block a tell-all book by a family member – because it’s largely accurate. Here’s Steve Benen:

If you’re new to the story, Mary Trump’s book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” is scheduled to be released next month. According to her publisher, Simon & Schuster, the book is a “revelatory, authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him.”

It’s also likely to shed some interesting light on one of the more embarrassing revelations surrounding the president: the New York Times reported that Mary Trump’s book is expected to say she was “a chief source” for the newspaper’s coverage of the president’s finances, “and that she provided the newspaper with confidential tax documents.”

As regular readers may recall, the Times‘ exhaustive research uncovered evidence of “dubious tax schemes” and “outright fraud” that Trump exploited to receive hundreds of millions of dollars from his father. The findings painted a picture in which the president, far from the self-made man he pretends to be, relied heavily on legally dubious family handouts.

There has to be an element of embarrassment to realize the quality of family traditions may not be up to snuff – especially for Donald J. Trump, who is reportedly driven by the opinions of those he perceives as higher on the social ladder himself.

My Arts Editor, that is. The headpiece.

Venetian doctor during the time of the plague. Museo Correr (Wikipedia)

It sits in the entryway hanging from a hook, vaguely menacing. Some night I’ll awaken to see someone slinking around in it.

It’ll be weird.

Paul Krugman at The New York Times, commenting on conservative culture, reminds me of something:

In the early 20th century the American South was ravaged by pellagra, a nasty disease that produced the “four Ds” — dermatitis, diarrhea, dementia and death. At first, pellagra’s nature was uncertain, but by 1915 Dr. Joseph Goldberger, a Hungarian immigrant employed by the federal government, had conclusively shown that it was caused by nutritional deficiencies associated with poverty, and especially with a corn-based diet.

However, for decades many Southern citizens and politicians refused to accept this diagnosis, declaring either that the epidemic was a fiction created by Northerners to insult the South or that the nutritional theory was an attack on Southern culture. And deaths from pellagra continued to climb. …

There continues to be a flurry of controversy over President Trump allegedly ordering testing to be slowed down:

While I regret that Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) represents California, a state Biden can count in his column and thus doesn’t need any help winning, I think Harris should be Biden’s selection as VP running mate. Perry Bacon, Jr. presents quite the analysis of why Democrats prefer this or that candidate; not being a Democrat, I think I can simply state the reasons I think she’d be a good pick, if not for the traditional reasons of attracting more votes in the election:

1. Biden owes the black community. Without the black community, Biden would be in his basement with no camera coverage. A lack of gratitude would impact him in many ways, some of which are not obvious, yet are critical.
2. Harris, as successful State AG and Senator, and being of Black / Asian heritage, presents a positive role model for black and brown women of all ages – in fact, women of all ages.
3. Harris is young, a couple of years younger than me, in fact. A whipper-snapper. And an important backup to Biden, if he should become ill, or worse. She is active, quite forward in her opinions, and experienced – all important attributes.
4. She is attractive to moderate Democrats. For all the yakkity yak about Warren, she makes the Democratic middle nervous. She’s whip-smart, but too old to be a backup to Biden – and I think she’s effective as a Senator, so why waste her when she’s problematic in the VP role? Progressives may love Warren, but Harris will attract more votes – or at least not drive them away.

For me, the most attractive attribute is #2, because it’s a long-term good. She brings enough to the table to help Biden win the contest, but it’s her long term impact which will best benefit the United States.

I realize there’s nothing insightful in my list, but sometimes it helps just to enumerate reasons for the various candidates. Those are most of mine.

John Bolton in an interview:

“Having seen him in operation for 17 months, I just cannot vote for him again,” Bolton told Inskeep. “I’m planning to write in the name of a conservative Republican, identity to be determined yet. But I will not be voting for Donald Trump, and I will not be voting for [presumptive Democratic nominee] Joe Biden.” [NPR]

If you do not vote for Trump, that’s a single vote subtracted from his vote total.

If you vote for Biden, the only serious challenger, that’s a two vote swing, and you’d be voting for basic governing competency.

But he can’t do it. Just another reason not to trust “Bomb Them” Bolton. He has no real dedication to his country, only to his predilections.

Not a recent pic, but impressive.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STSci/AURA)

NGCs 2936 and 2937.

It’s rather like the legendary Cake Wrecks website, only without the class.

Izzat a giant eyeball staring out of its ass, or what?

It’s the dormant Crappy Taxidermy website. My advice? View with only one eye open. No updates since 2015, and that’s perhaps for the best, eh?

NewScientist (13 June 2020, paywall) notes a mystery in our technology:

Ships around the world are reporting false locations, seeming to circle Point Reyes near San Francisco when they are actually thousands of kilometres away.

The locations are broadcast by each ship’s Automatic Identification System (AIS). These are required under international law to signal a vessel’s identity and GPS location. Bjorn Bergman of the environmental watchdogs SkyTruth and Global Fishing Watch discovered the anomalies from a historical database of AIS information.

Bergman was tipped off when he noticed records from 2018 and 2019 of satellites receiving AIS locations outside areas they cover, for example, a satellite over West Africa picking up a ship supposedly off California. Vessels affected included a livestock carrier near Libya, a cargo ship in the Suez Canal, a small boat off Chile and a Norwegian tug.

Most incidents lasted just a few hours, but a boat carrying oil workers to installations off the coast of Nigeria spent two weeks apparently circling Point Reyes, then veered off inland to Utah, occasionally jumping back to a Nigerian oil terminal. Most vessels appeared to circle off California, but others were displaced to Madrid or Hong Kong.

The obvious explanation, detailed in the article, is some sort of malicious attack, although exactly why Point Reyes is significant is not apparent. Not noted is the possibility of some sort of flaw in the system.

What lurks in the back of my mind is that this is a symptom of new physics, of something we thought we knew thoroughly, but didn’t. Call me a child, if you like. Sure, it’s not going to be that – but I refuse to stop hoping until hard evidence comes in.

Today I found my link to the conservative bloodstream had sent me a link to an article on Solomon Samuel Simone, which starts …

Solomon Samuel Simone (aka RAZ from CHAZ or CHOP) is the proclaimed warlord of CHAZ, the multi-block area located in Seattle.  Raz hates America but owns multiple guns, luxury automobiles, millions in real estate.

More importantly, Raz is supported by the Islamic government in Dubai. [Notorious conservative site The Gateway Pundit]

So I decided to do a bit of research on this dude. According to the non-conservative websites, which mostly seem to consist of entertainment news and fandom sources, he appears to be a rapper and Seattle resident who has joined the semi-autonomous area of Seattle that is centered around the abandoned Seattle Police precinct. Here’s a WaPo article on the area.

According to the conservative sites?

Solomon Samuel Simone (aka RAZ from CHAZ or CHOP) is the proclaimed warlord of CHAZ, the multi-block area located in Seattle. Raz hates America but owns multiple guns, luxury automobiles, millions in real estate.More importantly, Raz is supported by the Islamic government in Dubai.The leader of CHAZ, Warlord Raz Simone was previously identified running guns …

I don’t have to identify the site I took the above from, because the DuckDuckGo search revealed multiple conservative sites using the same verbiage; in fact, the only site that didn’t in the first couple of pages is the Chinese-oriented, Trump-boosting The Epoch Times. I investigated their article, but they wanted my email address to see it, and I declined the opportunity to be harassed with yet more conservative spam.

So this topic has evolved from a search for truth, which could be difficult to complete, to a statistical evaluation of communications. In this case, we’re seeing multiple conservative sites waging what appears to be a war to discredit a black leader of a protest movement. This is a coordinated effort, not independent investigations, and should at the very least raise suspicions in the mind of the careful reader that anything these sites put out are not worthy of trust – or even of investigation. Given the context, we need only remember that a group without a leader is (sorry, anarchists) usually an ineffective rabble. That’s why leaders are often targeted.

Now excuse me while I chastise my conservative friend for being a sucker.

For Americans, the entire subject of testing for Covid-19 is fraught with Federal government incompetence and mendacity. But how about in other places? NewScientist’s (13 June 2020) Adam Vaughn reports on UK testing efforts:

Officially, more than 5.7 million tests have been conducted in the UK so far, with 142,123 tests on 6 June. However, those simple totals mask a complex series of different tests.

A sizeable chunk of that daily count, 26,802, are antibody tests carried out under testing strategy pillars 3 and 4. These tests are used to see if someone has previously had the coronavirus, and for research on the virus’s spread. Such tests aren’t informative for detecting or tracing new cases, or advising someone on whether they should self-isolate.

The bulk of the daily number, 79,685 on 6 June, are “have you got it” nose-and-throat swab tests for people outside of hospitals, known as pillar 2. Those include tests posted to people at home, although these may not ever be taken or processed. There has also been a degree of double counting – for example, if a person’s nose and throat is swabbed separately, that may be counted as two tests.

The remaining 35,636 on 6 June were swab tests to confirm infection among hospital patients and staff, called pillar 1.

When tests are combined and counted up in this way, the government has been able to say it has met its targets – the most recent of these was 200,000 daily tests by the end of May. But without knowing how many people are being tested and to what extent double counting and unprocessed tests contribute to the totals, it is difficult for independent experts to say whether enough testing is taking place to understand and control the UK outbreak.

“Early on, what we really wanted to know was how lethal this condition was and we can’t get anywhere close to that until we know how many people have had the infection. If we wanted to know the infection fatality rate, we can only guess at the moment,” says Jason Oke at the University of Oxford.

Additionally, for monitoring how the country comes out of lockdown, Oke says “what we really need to do is have a system where we can monitor potential spikes in positive cases. We can only do that if we have clear data on who’s getting tested and how many people are getting tested, not just total numbers of tests.”

And more and more. It all smacks of political check-marking, which is not useful to scientists trying to understand the nature of the epidemic. Understanding leads to more effective reactions on our part, from treatments to prevention, and if we don’t let it be guided by science, rather than politicians frantic to meet goals set by other politicians, then we’re not going to have an effective response.

One item I wish the article had addressed but did not was the matter of economics: is testing constrained by financial concerns? The attentive reader will note that I used a very standard phraseology as not to activate the fight or flight response, but my own reaction is that letting financial concerns play into testing is a mistake: wealthy countries such as the UK and the US should be able to attack problems like this head-on, not cutting corners and thus endangering data completeness and integrity.

In other words: No accountants should be anywhere near the top of the decision making pyramid! We’re not the sort of societies which must make a choice between lives and wealth.

In case you weren’t aware, this offensive sort of thing was once a thing:

More at T. A. Cisco’s Black Americana Collection. My Arts Editor and I have occasionally seen such items at antique stores, which left me staring in disbelief.

(h/t RW)